Thursday, February 28, 2013

Puppy School Week 2

This week in class we learned that Rocket is much better at greeting randoms wandering around downtown than he is at greeting the instructor, and that Rocket can sit on command and politely greet anyone, anywhere that is not the classroom I'm not sure that the instructor would be satisfiedto hear that while he bounced around like a top with her, he successfully met street people and assorted crazys and did so with great grace.

Its all absolutely frustrating as hell, pretty much everything obedience related is frustrating as hell. Now I know why I paid the one -on-one-in-my-home guy so much, its much better atmosphere for learning. Group class is chaotic and the atmosphere could not be less conductive for learning. I almost think it would be better to have just the people attend the class and get detailed instructions for homework and do all the actual training that way.

Its good for the dogs though, to be around other dogs and people and its also nice to see that the other dogs are just as wild as Rocket is, it gives me comfort me while I'm frustrated as hell. Yay! The other dogs can't do this either! Wooo!

We also learned that shockingly, Rocket doesn't have a problem walking on textures - they could have just asked, the dog intentionally walks on metal vents in the street, I'm pretty sure he's not going to have a big problem with bubble wrap and aluminum foil.

It also became apparent that I have zero hand eye control and it is not possible for me to lead the dog through a exercise and give treats and work a clicker all at the same time. Its not going to happen. I can click and leader I can give treats and lead but I can't do them all at once. I vote for abandoning the clicker. I don't think I'm going to win that one.

This week for homework we are going to work on "leave it". Rocket needs this exercise and I'm looking forward to working on it. I really need him to "leave" stuff pretty frequently and it would be great if he could do this on command. We are also going to drill sit/down/sit, AKA puppy "sit ups" and go-to-your-spot. At least some of these will get worked on. Some of them will not, thus far we have managed to ignore the whole "go to your spot" drill pretty uniformly. Because its stupid and his "spot" is his crate anyway, he knows "crate up", and I'm satisfied with that. God, I'm a bad student.

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